A Simple Inscription
by tudor-rose445
Summary: A simple inscription of "Seaweed Brain" and "Wise Girl" on two wedding rings leads to a lifetime of memories.


AN: Since this is my first ever "Percy Jackson" fanfiction, I'm a little afraid that I haven't gotten Percy and Annabeth's characterizations right. But I figured I would give it a try.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Rick Riordan owns "Percy Jackson and the Olympians".

"Don't you think that the jeweler just might find it a little odd that we're inscribing our childhood nicknames on our wedding rings?"

The comment made by the dark haired man caused the young woman beside him to sigh in annoyance. Even to an outsider, one would be able to tell that the blonde woman had apparently gone over her plan numerous times to the twenty-year old. She tucked back a few stray curls behind her ear as she swiveled her gaze onto him. He looked a little sheepish at the sudden attention.

"Can you just do this one romantic thing for me, Percy?" she asked, hesitating in opening the glass door to the jewelers. Her gray eyes met his green ones as she tilted her head slightly to look up at him. Damn him and his growth spurt. She could still remember the time when they had been relatively the same height.

"It's the least you can do, seeing as you proposed to me in the middle of a subway station."

Percy's cheeks were tinted pink as the two stepped into the small shop at his fiance's reminder of his less-than-romantic proposal. In his defense, he had never been the type to plan things out. Spontaneity was more his style. Why wait to corner Annabeth in a dimly lit restaurant with some sappy band playing when he could just as easily ask her to marry him in a subway station? Of course, he hadn't planned on them missing their train. And it hadn't been his fault that they hadn't been allowed into Carnegie Concert Hall after they arrived there late because of the missed train. It had been a good thing that the pianist had been a child of Apollo and allowed them in late, or Annabeth would have murdered him in the middle of the lobby.

He vaguely realized that Annabeth was speaking to him. She was giving him an expectant look, as was the elderly jeweler behind the glass counter.

"The rings, Percy," she prompted, a small smile daring to emerge as she watched her longtime boyfriend flounder in his pockets for the velvet box.

He finally withdrew the ring box, located in the pocket opposite of Riptide, and handed it over to the jeweler. The old man carefully opened the box to observe them. "And what would you like engraved, Miss. Chase?" he asked, picking up the conversation that he had been having with the blonde while her fiance had been day-dreaming. Percy was surprised to see a bit of an embarrassed blush flit across her cheeks as she took the pad and pencil offered by the jeweler to write their inscriptions.

Hah! So he wasn't the only one embarrassed.

Annabeth slid the pad back over to the man, who tore his attention away from the new wedding bands to her written inscription. He crinkled his eyebrows together as he re-read the desired inscription.

"Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl?"

Annabeth cleared her throat and nodded as Percy disguised his own laugh into a cough.

The jeweler shrugged before snapping the box shut on the two gold rings

* * *

"Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl?"

The ten year old holding a silken pillow where two rings rested screwed up his face at the inscription.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Nico rolled his eyes from where he was lounging in an old upholstered chair. Grover looked up at Percy expectantly, half chewing a tin can that he had brought along to calm his nerves. Seeing that the best man nor the satyr were going to give him an answer, the ring bearer hopped off the step stool that he had been perched on to ask the dark haired man attempting to correctly put on his tie.

"What's it mean?"

Percy glanced down at the boy, a half-brother of Annabeth's who had been claimed a year earlier, before turning his attention back to his tie.

"It's just old nicknames that me and your sister gave to each other," he tried to explain, not able to express exactly what the names meant. The boy wouldn't understand the meaning behind them...no one did. No one other than Annabeth knew the fluttering in his stomach when she chose to use that name, instead of his given one. No one but her knew that teasing him in such a way would end in a long, heartfelt kiss soon after.

The boy glanced back down at the rings, no longer interested in the carved words.

"Well, that's dumb. Why not just put your real names?"

Nico laughed to himself as Grover smiled sheepishly.

Not for the first time did Percy wonder why he was standing in a church dressing room with two unhelpful groomsmen, when he could have just as easily eloped.

* * *

"And then he got down on one knee and proposed! Can you believe it?"

The gray-eyed girl flickered her gaze between her two parents, waiting for a reaction. Her smile faltered as the two simply stared back. She brushed back her shoulder length black hair causing her new engagement ring to catch the early morning light streaming in from the kitchen window. She waited expectantly for one of her parents to speak, her own anxiety mounting as the silence stretched.

Annabeth finally cleared her throat, breaking her stare as she turned her attention to her daughter's new ring.

"That's...that's great Lily. Really, it is."

Lily slumped in her chair, letting her hand come to rest in her lap. She lifted her gaze to her father as if hoping for a better reaction.

Percy hesitated before speaking.

"I think what you're mother is trying to say is...what we're both trying to say is...you're both so young," he said, scrambling for the correct words. He knew that both his eldest daughter and her longtime boyfriend were serious, but he hadn't quite expected that they were just this serious.

Lily rolled her eyes before straightening up in her chair.

"If I remember correctly, you and Mom got married when you were twenty. I'm nearly twenty-two. What's wrong with that?"

She gave him a pointed look, clearly asking why he wasn't seeing her logic. Percy could have laughed as he had more often than not seen the very same expression on his wife's face.

His daughter sighed as both her parents refrained from answering. She took both of her parents' left hands in one of her's, causing them both to stare down at the ringed hands.

"I love him...really, I do. And I'm ready to get married. To be a wife. I'm not the eight year old that you brought to Camp for the first time."

A smile flickered across Annabeth's face as she lifted her gaze to her daughter's.

Feeling a bit more reassured, their daughter went further.

"He'll take care of me, like Daddy did to you Mom. We will be happy, just like you two." She laughed lightly, looking at her own ringed finger peeping out from where it was encased in her mother's hand. "He even mentioned that he wants to get them engraved inside before our wedding. But I don't think that "Seaweed Brain" and "Wise Girl" would work out too well for us."

A shaky laugh escaped from her mother's lips which led to the older woman walking around the table to her daughter. She embraced her, burying her face into her daughter's neck as she gently cried. Lily observed her father over her mother's head, holding her breath as she waited for his reaction. He ran a slightly shaking hand through his hair, which now held more gray than just the single strand he had acquired from holding up the sky. He nodded his head slowly as he watched his daughter close her eyes in relief.

* * *

It was a cloudy morning when the hearse pulled up to the cemetery from the church. His only son helped him from the black limo that the family had rented to carry them in the funeral procession. He was glad for his son's arm as he wouldn't have been surprised if he had stumbled from the car in his own shock. She had simply complained of a fever, of some aches...and then she was dead. He forced in a deep breath to clear his thoughts as his son led him over to the growing crowd at his wife's coffin.

Hesitantly Percy took a glance into the open coffin, finding his wife's face relaxed as in sleep. His heart pounded in his chest as he took her in, ignoring her gray hair and withered skin. She was still the same sixteen year old that he had kissed in the lake at Camp underneath all of her wrinkles. His eyes were fixated on her folded hands as the priest droned on through the service. The coroner had asked him after preparing Annabeth's body for burial if he wished to keep her wedding ring. The man had expressed confusion over the word "Wise Girl" found inside the ring but Percy hadn't offered an answer. Instead he insisted that the ring remain with her, in the same place it had been when they were married.

He no longer could hear the priest. He didn't even hear his children and grandchildren behind him sniffling. All he could concentrate on was his wife and the fact that he would never hear her speak in this life again. He chanced a glance up from his wife finally after what seemed to be an eternity, finding a middle aged woman gazing upon Annabeth. She too, did not seem to be listening to anyone around her. When she raised her eyes- gray like Annabeth's- he was suddenly reminded of the woman who had threatened him on Mount Olympus if he ever mistreated her daughter. She gave him a sad nod before going back to looking down upon her daughter.

Percy knew well enough that this graveyard was not to be his wife's final resting place. As a hero of The Battle of Olympus, she was to be given a warrior's funeral at Camp that night. But this funeral was more for her mortal friends than for anything else. That night she would be surrounded by her family: her cousins, her half-siblings, her children.

He barely heard the priest asking for his last goodbye until his younger daughter gently prodded him forward. He turned to glance back at his child, the only one to inherit her mother's hair color, before advancing to the coffin. Her barely caught the edge of the velvet bag tucked underneath her sleeve containing two gold drachma for Charon to ferry her onto the next life, as most of her mortal friends would comment on the inclusion of this gift had it been placed in an obvious place. Her took up her left hand, raising it was shaking hands up to his lips. He kissed her knuckles, right above her wedding band, before gently replacing it on her unmoving chest.

* * *

He hadn't been long after her. Even the Curse of Achilles couldn't save one from old age. He had been surrounded by his children and grandchildren; it was all he could ask for. He stared down at his hands, no longer wrinkled with age. They looked as they had been when he had first been married. When he had been a young man. He inhaled deeply as he was presented to the gates of Elysium. Nico apparently had pulled some strings with his father, requesting that Percy's entrance papers be approved quickly. Even for a hero of the Battle of Olympus, Percy thought that he had entered Elysium quite quickly.

He squinted against the seemingly blinding sun of the paradise after a time in the darker banks of the Underworld. He blinked a few times before running his hand through his now darkened hair. A feeling of expectation welled up in his chest.

He began to discern a figure coming toward him, waving their hand in the air. The light caught on something on the figure's hand- their left hand- as it neared him. His breath caught in his throat as he began to make out his wife's form, looking much as it had the day they had been married. She grinned as she neared him, reaching up to run her hand down the gray streak in his hair.

"I've missed you, Seaweed Brain," she said, unable to stop looking at him. It was as if she was afraid he would simply disappear.

He chuckled, leaning down to her.

"You too Wise Girl."

He paused, a inch from her lips.

"You too."


End file.
